The Changes And the Happily Ever After
by Syruny
Summary: Jonas arrives at the Elsewhere he had been longing to find. His decision to escape from the Community will cause the whole world around him to change. This short story starts the moment you read the last word on the last chapter.


***DISCLAIMER* I DO NOT own any of "The Giver's" material or take ANY credit for it. This is just a fanfiction written for fun and I DO NOT intend to earn anything from it. It is not linked to any of the other books "Gathering Blue" or "Messenger" either. I only utilize one of the characters from the perviously mentioned books to help create the ending of this story. **

_**This short story is made as an alternate ending to The Giver, following up right after the last word you'll read on the last chapter.**_

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><p><strong> The Changes And the Happily Ever After<strong>

He opened his eyes to the wonders of this new world. He was laying on the ground on something soft and cold, he recognized this as snow. A sweet giggling sound that was familiar to him caught his attention. When he looked in the direction of the sound, he saw Gabriel sitting next to him smiling. As Jonas' senses started growing more aware, he heard a soft, beautifully soothing sound that seemed to come from all around him. Looking up, he could see the Sun sitting right in the middle of it, decorated with fluffy clouds floating all around it. He felt someone touch him, and when he looked, it was a girl. She was now sitting next to Gabriel in the snow, smiling at him.

"Welcome to the Village, Jonas!" She cheered, smiling hugely, and offered her hand to help Jonas up. Jonas, not being sure about what to do or say, took her hand, and after standing up he looked around himself at the space that surrounded him. What he saw made him smile. He saw his memories; people were standing all around him, but not just any people, but people who love, who sing, who share, who decide. He finally found that place he was looking for, that Elsewhere, was differences were accepted, no one was being controlled, and real emotions were felt.

In the Community everything was disastrous. The first thing that happened, after Jonas' "loss," was that people started seeing colors. They would get random glimpses of colors now and then, and with time they kept the colors. Everyone believed they were going crazy despite the Elder's speech about "everything being alright and normal." The psychiatrics' office was flooded all the time. This was a matter of concern for the Elders; the Community would get out of control if this continued, but so far, so good. They told the citizens that it wasn't a matter to worry about, successfully keeping things calm, for a while.

Eventually, something worse hit the Community. The inhabitants had started dreaming about the things of back and back and back. They would see an elephant drinking water from a pond. A bird diving into the oceans, lightly touch the water, and fly back up with a fish on its beak. They would see a little baby running around a house giggling and it would make them feel a warm feeling. Some would see themselves exploring the dangers of a beautiful rainy forest. Others, though, didn't have that good luck of dreaming with nice things. They could see a man being beaten up b other man. They would feel the pain of falling and breaking a bone while bleeding like they never thought was possible. They would see a car crash unto another, or a human being hit by a car. And they would feel it all.

People started getting curious and scared about these dreams. The adults were instructed to keep their dreams a secret from their children because only the adults were dreaming these. Eventually, though, the kids started having the same indescribable dreams of weird creatures, insane pains and bizarre emotions. They were given a higher dose of Stirrings medicine, it seemed to help. Some adults lucky enough to get nice dreams started liking the feelings in these and they would stop taking their Stirrings medicines because they wanted to explore the dreams more. But it went wrong. Instead of their expected nice dreams, their dreams became increasingly more horrible and painful, making the adults that quit request a higher dose of Stirrings medicine.

When the Elders saw that they didn't know what to do, they decided to have a meeting with the previews Receiver of Memory. It was an open meeting for the citizens. The Giver didn't have much to tell them or a way to help. He just told them to calm down, that these things that were happening were necessary, and that more would come. After he said this, the people lost control, demanding for answers and bombarding the Giver with a lot of questions. The Giver explained most of these, like the things they saw were real animals in the past, that the feelings were the real feelings, that the colors were the real shades of the world, and that the memories of the real world was now theirs to carry. After a few minutes of this, the Giver ended up being pushed away by the Elders because he was giving too much information and no one should know what he was saying.

There was one peculiar incident that made the citizens completely lose their heads: the appearance of the Sun in the sky one morning. People were tormented as if doom had been sent upon them, they would go around town screaming desperately that the world had gone against them and that they would melt and die at the burning heat that came from that "thing." Although most persons were scared to death by the Sun, some persons believed that the heat of it was nice and soothing, and they would lay by the river to catch some sunlight while no one was looking.

And so their long-closed eyes started opening to the reality of the world. Slowly, all the restrictions and rules and barriers collapsed. It was as though the Community had been covered by a veil, encasing it from all the things that their eyes could now see. It was scary at first, but slowly, over the course of 6 whole years, as their eyes saw more and their brains filled with knowledge, they realized how good a life with no rules or premade decisions could be. Even though they had new beliefs in life, most inhabitants of the Community were too scared to act; they had been threatened to be released by the Elders themselves if caught breaking the rules.

The Elders held under control most of the Community for a long time. The populace would still follow their old lifestyle even though they had seen and felt through their dreams the wonderfulness of freedom, of choice, of difference. They knew how much more beautiful the world was with all its colors and cute creatures and weird floating balls in the sky that they knew were called Sun, Moon and stars. Even knowing this, they were too scared to explore this, to push forward and fight. They were so scared to break the rules that they just stayed put and continued on their lives, ignoring all the colors around them, the warm and fuzzy sunshine, and the small little creatures that somehow had found their way into the Community. And this cowardice was just what the Elders wanted.

Jonas was fairly established at the Village by now. He had spent these years living with an old lady names Esther. She took care of him and Gabriel when they arrived at the Village and has cared and loved them ever since. They even call her grandma, thing she loves because she never had grandchildren. They had become a happy family.

Jonas, because of the experience he had gained when escaping from the Community, had offered himself for a dangerous job at a time when the Village was in desperate needs. He travels back and forth between villages giving, bringing and exchanging resources to keep all the families in the Villages nice and fed, well dressed, and with an overall proper life. After 4 years of his services though, they were not needed as often anymore because the villages were expanding and slowly merging together.

On one of his journeys to a nearby Village about three years ago, Jonas encountered a couple of persons walking towards him.

"Excuse me," the man said. Jonas observed him. He looked to be about 30 years old. He was tall and lean, had black hair and trimmed facial hair.

"Are you lost? You need help?" Jonas asked, thinking the family must be from a nearby village and they couldn't find their way back. People in the Communities couldn't trim their facial hair. The man was accompanied by a woman around his own age, same skin tone and hair color, and two kids, a girl whose hair was short and a boy whose hair was vibrant red.

"Well- we are lost. We don't know where to go." The man said, looking at the woman as if for support. "You see, we come from one of the Communities."

Jonas' jaw dropped. He was about to say something but the man continued after breathing in deeply. "If you are from another Community, please I beg you, don't tell you saw us."

Jonas shook his hands in front of him. "I used to be from the Community actually." He smiled sympathetically. The man breathed deeply again as he slowly relaxed. "Now I live in the Village, It's a wonderful place, just like back and back and back."

The woman, who was smiling, now spoke to him. "We were trying to find a way out. The Community is in a state of chaos right now. People are too confused as to what to believe and what to ignore. But I had a hunch. I felt like believing and escaping the Community was the best option. To go out and find the Elsewhere that would probably be the place were all the things we dreamt existed. I spoke to my family and we all agreed to take the risk. We truly love each other."

"We don't remember how all of this started though," the man continued. "I remember we had performed a Ceremony of Loss for that poor child, the was-to-be new Receiver of Memory. The Elders said he drowned in the river. Since then we started seeing new things. Different things and it scared us. At one point we started searching for answers but nobody gave them. Not even the past Receiver of Memory."

"How is he?" Jonas asked excitedly and curious. He had been so anxious to know about the Giver."I remember him!"

"We don't really know," the man answered. "The Elders have been keeping everything from everyone for years. I can't believe people still stick to them."

Jonas felt sad about the Giver. He never did know about him. He took this family to the Village and eventually he encountered more families like this. Groups of people even. And the numbers of people escaping kept increasing. The families that made it to the Villages somehow found a way to send letters to other families in the Communities, telling them how to get to the Villages and about how happy and different their lives are in the Villages.

Jonas was fascinated. The amount of people coming to the Village from the Communities was overwhelmingly awesome. For a period of time, he had a lot of work. Because of the Villages growing in population so fast, he had to be out coming and going from Village to Village almost daily. Gabriel, who was 7 at this time, joined him in his journeys along with Kira, the girl who welcomed them to the Village. They had become good friends since then, she was a year younger than him but she was smarter, in a sense. That first year, Jonas followed her around almost every day and she used to teach him the ways of this world. Even though Jonas learned a lot through his memories, there were still a ton of things he didn't get to know of. He liked to be around Kira. She filled him with her happy, always joyful and hyper spirit. Her looks also intrigued him; she was pale white with strange yellow hair. Jonas thought she looked lovely.

They spent most of their time together the first 2 years. Jonas started feeling an uncanny desire to get closer to her, to know more about her, and sometimes he wanted to give her a hug. But out of respect he kept his emotions at bay all the time. Once, Jonas witnessed a little exchange that he had never seen in his life, it fascinated him. He and Kira were walking around the Village, like any other normal day, talking about pumas and pandas and hummingbirds. As they turned corner, they saw how a teenage boy, who definitely was around his age, met his lips shortly with the lips of a girl that was around their age too. The pair then held hands and smiled at each other. Jonas felt an emotion that he recognized as embarrassment when he looked at Kira for an explanation and saw that she was blushing. Later on that day she told Jonas that what they had seen was a kiss. She told him that couples do that type of thing. A male and a female that are fond of each other, she had said.

"Married couples, young unmarried ones like them. It's love. He's her boyfriend and she's his girlfriend. Isn't that cute, Jonas?" she had asked. Jonas could only wonder why couples in the Community didn't do that and why he never heard about boyfriends and girlfriends. He stared at Kira curiously.

"So you can chose who your loved one can be." He said as if stating a fact.

'Well, your heart does, Jonas." She corrected him, smiling. Kira was now prettier in Jonas' eyes, and his mysterious desires to hug her immediately became something different.

With the pass of the years Jonas and Kira grew closer. They couldn't go for long periods of time without seeing each other; they would miss each other to the point that they would get depressed and wouldn't concentrate on anything. When they were together, it felt as though they didn't have enough time to be together. Because of this, Kira decided to accompany Jonas to work one day, they couldn't take being apart. All of the time they pent together was fun. It made both of them blissful. Made them want to cling to each other and never let go. And they did so.

Eventually, about 10 years after Jonas' arrival at the Village, things settled down. The Communities were no longer Communities, no one ruled over anyone, their lives were not controlled, and people had freedom to choose. Some say they even had more freedom than those from back and back and back. There were, though, some people that were still believers of the old, "perfect" controlled lifestyle that kept them content and away from any harm. These people would live in fear far away from civilization, and some of them got together to form a kind of Village were they could hide in fear and pretend everything was not real. The rest of the population couldn't have happier lives.

Jonas was now married to Kira; they did so when Jonas was 21 and Kira was 20. Their wedding was celebrated by the whole Village. Even though people didn't really know who Jonas really was, they admired him for his bravery for being the first person to escape the Community, along with Gabriel. He had, though, some fan boys that somehow had a feeling and belief that Jonas was the Receiver of Memory who was Lost in the river but they weren't certain, they had washed away that person's name and existence from their minds with the Ceremony of Loss. Jonas never said anything though. He decided keeping the truth to himself was the best; he did tell Kira, but they and Gabe were the only ones to ever certainly know the truth. He was really proud of himself. Looking at the people being happy and loving and different, he noticed how his decision was the right one. Thanks to the Giver, he was able to make a difference and change the world for the better.

The End.


End file.
